It runs in the family
by Fanatic Drone N
Summary: A visit to another line of the Cooper Clan results in a story of the origins of Sly's worst enemy. All things, however, are not what they seem...
1. Chapter 1

"Sly, are you sure about this? We could be walking into a trap."

"Bentley, I've walked into too many traps in my life to be scared about them anymore. Besides, we all know why you don't want to come: You asked me _specifically_ to rob a jewelry store."

Murray snickered, almost crashing into a sign on the narrow highway. Bentley began to stutter quickly, desperately denying Sly's accusations.

"I'm not gonna-you really think I'd-me and-" He yelped, face blushing a dark green.

"Oh, come on Bentley," The raccoon said with a smile, grinning at the startled turtle through the mirror, "It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's just hilarious, that's all."

This provoked more snickering from Murray and more denial from Bentley. It was no secret amongst the tight-nit group that the ol' brainiac intended to propose by the end of the year, despite Bentley's best attempts not to let his plans to slip out to the gang (or, God forbid, Penelope). The Cooper gang had reformed a few months after Sly had developed 'amnesia', when the master thief thought it would be better for him to leave on his terms than for Carmelita to figure out that Sly had just elaborately fooled her into thinking he'd turned over a new leaf for several months, with the express intent of flirting with her. Sly had left her a note saying '_That was fun. I should get amnesia again sometime._', hid on another building where he could see her read it, and watched the fireworks. Despite squatting on an absolutely filthy Paris rooftop, it had been worth it to see her face. Sly quickly rounded up the old three-man Cooper Gang (Penelope would sometimes help them out on jobs), and got back to thievery, messing with Interpol, and teasing Bentley about his imminent nuptials.

However, it wasn't all teasing to Sly: The fact that Bentley was going to be starting a family soon convinced Sly to look more into the story of his own. Using bits of information from the _Thievius Raccoonus_, information in prominent Cooper hotspots around the world, and local folklore about 'Dang raccoons comin' in and takin' everything', he worked diligently to find what information he could about his family, and the goal he knew from the beginning was hopelessly futile: Finding remnants of the Cooper Clan.

And to his complete and utter amazement, he found them.

They were holed up in Russia, south of Novgorod, in a small village with an unpronounceable name (Bentley's coaching in Russian hadn't helped with the written language; 'It's written in _Cyrillic_, Sly: The letters are supposed to look like that!'), trying to get through life as anonymously as possible. If Bentley hadn't run a search of world government databases, the name would never had come up, and when it did, it was a reference to a neighbor in a small stolen object report that had been filed at a nearby police station.

Still, Coopers were Coopers, and Sly had part-bribed part-snuck his way into the country to see what could very well be the last line of the family on Earth.

They pulled off the narrow road into the town, and were greeted by the sight of a small, generally left-alone town, crouching as a bulwark of civilization in the otherwise uninhabited forest. Tall pines grew on either sides of the dirt road, and Sly couldn't help but wonder: A line of master thieves lives _here_?

They pulled into even narrower, dirtier streets, until Sly spotted the right house. Though it was pretty much the same as the ones next to it, there were little clues that the family was better-off than its neighbors: The paint was new, the roof was in good condition, there was a rare imported tree from Japan in the backyard, etc.

The van, painted a duller tone to blend in (against Murray's wishes), pulled up in front of the driveway-less home, as little faces peeked fearfully out the windows before being pulled back in by older hands.

Sly stepped out of the van, and was greeted by a middle-aged woman, also a raccoon, who stepped out of the house, rubbing her hands together nervously.

"Can I help you?" She asked, obviously worried Sly was bad news. They looked like a family that had been in hiding for a long time, and any attention was therefore a bad thing.

"Yes, ma'am, I think you can," Sly said, "You see, I think we're long-lost cousins or something."

The woman looked confused, but her confusion descended into outright shock when Sly pulled out his cane.

For a few long seconds, nothing happened. A cold wind blew down the street. Suddenly she screamed in delight, and began rapidly yelling Russian back to the house too fast for Sly's non-native mind to comprehend. Faster than he could react, he was swarmed by small children hugging his legs and yelling things like 'Cousin!', while their elders thumped him on the back and pinched his cheeks, all telling each other how incredible this was. Bentley and Murray were dragged out of the car, Bentley yelling like he was being devoured by piranhas, and the entire group was stared at, hugged, and viciously hair-tousled by about forty of Sly's kin.

Suddenly, a sharp, loud voice called out through the crowd, instantly hushing the tumult and parting the relatives: "Let me see him!"

They quickly stepped aside, making a pathway for an old, withered woman, who advanced determinedly but slowly, hunched over a thin walking stick. Her dull grey clothes and squinting face suggested an old woman who ruled her family domain through ear-pulling and scolding, and she reminded Sly immediately of his third-grade math teacher. Still, she was obviously much loved and respected by the family: Little children grinned at each other and whispered 'Babushka!' to those who couldn't see.

The old woman came forward, then tilted her head and stared at Sly with her right eye, probably the only one she could still see out of. The critical look on her face turned to open astonishment as her mouth fell open, and the waking stick slid out of her hand, breaking the silence with a small _thud_.

"Heaven help us!" She whispered, "A Parisian Cooper! You must be… You're that Sly one we heard about! Good God!"

The old woman stumbled forward like she was having a heart attack, but instead grabbed the cane and twisted it in her hands, mouth moving slightly, fragments of sentences coming out. "The cane… This is the same one they made in these woods… This must be where… This came from… Good God!" She said again, turning to look at the gang.

An ecstatic grin came over her face. "An active Gang! There are still Coopers thieving in the world… Yuri, get the pork! We're going to be very good hosts for these young men!"

What followed can best be described as a massive furry wave sweeping up three very scared master thieves, carrying them forcibly into a small, overcrowded house to a dining room that extended back into the backyard, and then proceeding to the unconventional and unintentional method of murder labeled by survivors as Death by Borscht. This consists of being seated at a table by very enthusiastic, probably very bored relatives, and being given round after of very filling food, accompanied by 'Good, yes?' and 'You're too skinny! You've got to eat more!'

Bentley fared the worst: All his advanced technology was useless in this horribly crowded situation, and he moaned for help as wave after wave of Coopers swarmed him with dumplings and turnip-based soup. Sly suffered more in physical trauma: People mussed up his hair, his cane made rounds around the room, and his cheeks were pinched viciously by old women who were surprisingly comfortable around the greatest thief in two decades.

Murray, to his credit, was faring very well: He was shoveling pound after pound of food into his stuffed mouth, much to the enjoyment of the old women of the family who probably had nothing better to do than cook food and watch people eat it.

"You're family's _awesome_, Sly!" The already-overweight hippo said, "You gotta get some kids so there'll be more!"

This provoked a round of laughter from the Cooper Clan that drowned out Bentley's cries of 'I'M TOO YOUNG TO DIE!'

"Uh," Sly said, trying to avoid having the reddish soup in front of him shoved forcibly into him mouth, "I was actually here too learn more about the family."

The old woman who had examined him out front grinned at him. "We'll tell stories later. Now it's time to eat." She grabbed a spoon, and shoveled up some borscht. Never had a piece of silverware looked so threatening.

"I'm kinda in a hurry-I've gotta-Bentley's getting-I'M ALLERGIC TO TURNIP!" He yelled desperately as the steaming hot food threatening to be force-fed to him hovered menacingly above his mouth.

The old woman frowned. "You don't want borscht?" She asked irritated.

Sly nodded.

She rolled her eyes. "All right…" She said, setting down the spoon. Sly sighed in relief.

"Dumplings then!" She said brightly, holding up a heavy plate of food.

Several hours later, a very full Sly was sprawled in a lawn chair next to Bentley.

"That wasn't _too_ bad…" Sly said slowly, watching as Murray introduced football to the crowd of children.

Bentley grunted. "I'm glad you got sent to the orphanage and not to these people."

"Well, we just got force-fed about forty pounds of Russian food, so we won't have to eat anything for a week," Sly reasoned, "Plus, we found out that the Cooper family line is alive and thriving, so-"

"Get what you came for so we can leave." Bentley said in a monotone.

The old woman, obviously the matriarch of the family, came and sat next to Sly. "Sorry about that. We haven't had any guests for a while, and you're a _Cooper_… Well, the only way we know how to treat guests is with dinner. It's just incredible to see you. We thought everyone else had been killed by that… Well, I'm sure you know about Clockwerk."

"Oh, not really," Sly said sarcastically, "He just broke into my house when I was eight, killed my parents, and stole the _Thievius Raccoonus_, so then I had to travel around the world to get the pages back, until I finally confronted him in a giant volcano, blew him up with missiles and the help of an Interpol cop, and then finally smashed his head open with this cane."

The woman gaped.

"Other than that, though, nothing. I actually came to learn more about Cooper family history, especially the parts involving the giant metal owl I blew up."

She was silent, mouth agape, for several long seconds, before she croaked out the words, "You… killed… the _thing_ that has murdered hundreds of Coopers over the years… that wore us down to a mere hundred in this village and yourself? You killed Clockwerk… by _yourself_?"

"Well, Bentley and Murray were there to help me. Of course, there was the cop from Interpol, but she doesn't really count."

The woman grinned and laughed with joy. "Oh, happy days!" She cried, "The beast is dead! Our family is safe once more! Blessed day, oh blessed day!"

Bentley shot Sly a weary look. "Great: Now we're gonna get swarmed by everyone again."

The old woman laughed. "No, I won't do that to you: I'll tell them when you're safely out of town."

Bentley grinned thankfully, and Sly leaned forward. "So how about those stories, eh?"

She frowned. "The story of Clockwerk and our family are intertwined with the _Thievius Raccoonus_. You yourself saw the ending, and you can read the of the middle in the book. I can only tell you of the beginning… Believe me, it's not a happy story."

"I didn't come for happy stories. I came for the truth."

The aged raccoon eyed him again, before finally sinking into her wooden chair. "Very well then… I will tell you the story… It begins not far from here, in those very woods…"

And there, under the aged tree brought over from Japan growing in the Cooper family backyard, the old woman told her far-removed cousin a story. It was the story of a great family of thieves, stretching back to the dawn of history. It was the story of friends Cooper and Vladimir, who together set into motion a series of events that would change the world. Above all, it was the story of Clockwerk, the incarnation of hatred itself, and his lowly origins…

And, indeed, it was not a happy story.

* * *

**Fanatic Drone N Presents:**

**It runs in the family**


	2. Chapter 2

Deep in the Russian woods, hundreds of miles north of the Black Sea and any form of civilization, in the maze of trees that still ruled the world in those days, silence reigned supreme. Occasionally a wind would blow and stir the pine trees' upper branches, and a bird would squawk at a passing animal. On the whole though, very little happened except the ever-continuous growth of the trees. All was quiet.

Which was exactly the way the raccoon liked it.

The raccoon in question, a thin, wiry fellow, was crouching in the lower branches of one of the trees, eyeing a bird's nest about thirty feet above him in a nearby tree. With one hand, he held on to the bough above him for balance, while with the other he held a thin wooden staff topped by a metal hook, which he had recently painted a flashy golden color to prevent corrosion and show off to the girls back home. He jumped off his branch, then quickly froze when he landed on the next one, eyes darting nervously around for his target.

"Too much noise…" He scolded himself, determined not to let the crazy old bird see him. Where was Vlad anyways? He needed to be ready when he got the food.

Suddenly, a sharp caw echoed through the forest, and the raccoon flattened himself to the trunk of the tree. Far above him, he knew a massive hawk was circling around, looking for prey to swoop down and unceremoniously disembowel. The question of _Why am I doing this?_ presented himself to the raccoon, who simply dismissed it with a _This is too much fun to pass up_, and leapt to the next branch.

The hawk, on its part, was having a very bad day. First, it had to leave the nest, but it was getting pretty hungry and the eggs could look after themselves for twenty minutes while it went to get something to eat, right? Then, he was totally unable to find anything in the forest that did not immediately sprint away when he got close. The old predator was simply too well known around here: Any survivors of its frequent hunting forays knew the warning signs and how to get away. It could still catch them, of course, but that would mean long flights and grueling hunts. The element of surprise was gone, and now killing was just work, work, work. The bird resolved to go carry off one of those raccoons at their camp, but they were gone. Vanished. Without a trace. Having spent the better part of the hour flying around, burning calories, and still not having anything to eat, the old bird swept back down to its nest, very irritated indeed.

It didn't help things when it saw that every last one of the eggs were gone.

In the future, there would be people with annoying bumper-stickers like '_Shit Happens_' or '_Somewhere, someone is having a worse day than you_' to take its anger out on, but, for the moment, it was stuck without a punching bag. The nest was still there, so they hadn't fallen to the ground, and that meant only one thing: Something was deluded enough to think it could get away with the alpha predator's eggs.

In spite of the obvious lack of offspring that was setting off alarm bells in its mind, the bird was actually pretty pleased about this. The egg thief wouldn't have dared eat the eggs so close to the nest, so it was still in the area, trying to escape with its meal. It could simply kill the intruder, get the eggs back, and have a good meal on top of that.

The bird began to scan the area, doing a 360 with its super-sensitive eyes to find its prey: Trees-trees-trees-raccoon with a stick-trees-_Wait…_

The bird turned back to see that, one, the intruder had been perched and waiting on the same branch the entire time, and, two, had pulled his arm back and was now swinging the pointy stick at it as fast as he could.

The hawk opened its beak in surprise, before about two hundred pounds of force hit it on the business end of a sharp piece of metal.

It dropped like a rock, spiraling down through the trees with a nasty gash in its side and a minor cracked rib. Halfway to the ground, it stopped, flapping desperately. Despite its wound, the bird was immensely powerful, and it was not about to be taken down by some tenderfoot raccoon who had snuck up behind him with some cheap weapon. Cawing in anger, it began to rise powerfully back up to its nest, before a brown blur traveling well over seventy miles an hour hit it like a bullet.

The raccoon watched the blur slam into the hawk, carry it thirty feet at nearly the same speed as it had been traveling before, right into the base of a tree. He anxiously watched the two tangled birds on the bottom of the tree until he was sure that the hawk was dead and his friend was alright.

"Way to go Vlad!" He yelled, waving the slightly-bloody cane in the air as his friend pulled his feet out of the corpse's side, the morbid nature of their victory detracting somewhat from the celebrations.

His friend, an owl by the name of Vladimir who disliked being called 'Vlad' about as much as tackling a massive hawk, glared up at the raccoon. "Easy for you to say!" He snapped, "_I_ did all the work!"

"Did you have to climb up a tree hundreds of feet into the air?" The raccoon countered, "No."

"Cooper, I was twice as high up as you'll ever be, and then I had to nosedive at a gigantic hawk that's killed dozens of other owls!" Vladimir shot back.

"You have _wings_." Cooper said, flapping his arms up and down for effect. In later years, when asked which clan they were, his descendants would answer 'Cooper's'. Of course, while they meant 'Cooper's clan', others took it to mean they were Coopers, and the name stuck.

The owl glared at the raccoon a moment longer, before turning with relief towards the dead bird. "At least we've got something good to eat. Ohh, there's a lot of food here…"

Cooper made a face. "You're not actually going to… _Eat_ that, are you?"

"Yes. Why not?"

"Well, you're both birds… Wouldn't that make you a cannibal or something?"

Vladimir shot Cooper a deadpan look. "I'm not going to take dietary advice from a _raccoon_."

They both laughed, and Cooper jumped down branch to branch to the forest floor.

"Well, I don't know about you, but I prefer eggs to bird carcass any day. I'm getting these scrambled."

"Yes, and that's why you're so skinny. If you ate more you'd be a lot stronger, like me."

"You mean fatter?"

Vladimir laughed, and grabbed the corpse in his claws. "Well, wise guy, maybe you can figure out how to get all this food back to camp. Any suggestions?"

"How 'bout you carry it, and I supervise."

This banter continued as Cooper and Vladimir each grabbed an end of the dead bird, carried it back through the forest, and into the deserted camp.

They laid down their prize next to the fire pit, and Cooper walked up to a tent. "Ma, we're back!"

An older raccoon stuck her head out of the tent, and regarded her son in the way some people usually regard ghosts. Her mouth opened and closed in shock, and her eyes grew wide. "You… didn't really… go… after… the… the…" She said, unable to either comprehend the sight in front of her or string together a complete a sentence.

"The bird? Yep! My plan worked to perfection. I _told _you we'd make it."

Other raccoons stuck their heads out of the tents ringing the fire. Owls (Vlad's kin) cautiously peered out from the trees. There was a moment of silence as they all regarded their children and the very substantial meal they had brought home.

Then Cooper's mother broke out weeping, and shot out of her tent to embrace her son. "Don't EVER do anything like that again!" She sobbed, shaking her son violently.

The spell of fear was broken: Everyone in the camp immediately swarmed out to embrace the heroes, praising them for their bravery, and laughing triumphantly over the corpse of their dead enemy. When Cooper had first proposed his plan to go kill the horrible bird that had been attacking them for years, no one but Vlad was willing to help. Fearful of the hawk's wrath, they had all hidden themselves fro view, certain that once the beast had slain cooper and Vladimir, it would return for vengeance. When the hawk flew overhead before, they assumed it meant the plan had failed.

Now, though, there was celebration for their victory, and already some were lighting up a bonfire to cook the food with. The greatest curse on their lives was finally ended, the tribes of the region were now saved, and the greatness of the twosome's deed would be remembered for all time.

This didn't stop Cooper from getting a tongue-lashing, though.

"And, I swear, if you ever scare me like that again, I'm going to kill you! What were you thinking? Why did you go and put your poor mother through all that?"

"To save dozens of lives, to get food to last us through the winter, to-" Cooper said, counting off the reasons on his fingers.

"Don't get smart with me!"

Cooper's father simply laughed. "Dear, let him enjoy his big moment. His plan certainly worked, didn't it?"

Meanwhile, among the owls, who shared their campgrounds with the raccoons in a generations-old alliance that had strengthened both tribes, Vladimir was basking in the warm glow of admiration and pride that emanated from his friends and relatives.

Soon enough, the food was ready, and drinks were passed around to go with the meal. Cooper and Vlad were given the seats of honor next to the fire.

"To my good friend Vlad," Cooper yelled above the din, raising his primitive cup in the air in a precursor to a toast, "Who did all the work!"

"And to my good friend Cooper," Vladimir boomed merrily, "Who… well, yeah, I did all the work."

Everyone laughed, and clinked their cups together as the sun sank below the horizon.

* * *

This was only the first in a long line of ingenious schemes Cooper had pulled off in his life. The first had been when he was eight years old, and one of the older children in the camp took his sister's doll and stuck it up a tree. Since Cooper had a crush on her at the time, he snuck up into the tree, grabbed the toy, and snuck back down before the brother could notice. He immediately gave it back to her, but in that moment he established the Cooper family tradition of stealing from criminals… Or, at least those who didn't deserve what they had.

However, he got more that day than a little kiss on the cheek that made him blush and the elders say 'Aww'. He felt a thrill sneaking past his superior enemy, beating strength with cunning, getting to the grand prize. He found that his cunning and skill really were his best assets in life, so he began to hone them, learning how to move silently, how to use the darkness, and how to trick his victims into a false sense of security. In the beginning, it was restricted only to harmless pranks or childish vengeance on his friends and family, but soon he felt his skills were starting to grow beyond his tribe's ability to compete. There was nothing truly valuable being stolen or lost among the tight-nit group, so he began turning his skills to hunting, driving deer into traps, creeping into bear caves to steal fish, and stuff like that.

And yet, even those challenges began to bore him. Pulling off bigger and bigger jobs, he quickly searched for something, _anything_ in the Russian backwoods to occupy his attention. One day, though, a traveling man came from the south, looking for the tribe of hunters he had heard about there. In exchange for valuable furs, he offered to sell them special 'metal' spears like the more sophisticated tribes to the far south used. Everyone eagerly traded in vast amounts of hard-to-get furs for these miracle weapons, including Cooper. The only difference was that Cooper found out that the bronze spearheads were only a thin layer deep: The con man had sold them ordinary stone _covered_ in a thin layer of metal. He did not warn the rest of the tribe, but instead waited for him to leave before revealing the deception. When his family demanded to know why he hadn't told them, he produced two bags, one with all their furs, the other carrying the solid bars of metal he had originally impressed them all with. Of course, he kept a few bars to make his cane.

There had been another celebration then, as there was after he had slain the beast, but he had felt a thrill, crawling through the wooden support beams at the top of the salesman's tent, slipping silently between boxes, picking locks, that he had never felt before. Every other job, every other success, was just too easy compared to this. Desperate for something to excite him again, he cooked up his plan to slay the hawk, the terror of the region, and even managed to convince Vlad, his best friend and partner in 'crime', to join him.

And it still was too simple.

It was for this reason, perhaps, that Cooper one day decided to leave Russia. Maybe it would have been better, for everyone, if he had stayed, but then again the Cooper line would never have existed. The great fortunes would never have been assembled. Monarchs wouldn't have been toppled, Empires would have remained just as oppressive and powerful as they ever were.

But was it worth it, if it brought out Clockwerk?

The answer is open to interpretation.


End file.
